Posts Tagged ‘updates on previous stories’
Just the facts about EHV-1!
I know that you are all worried about this, and I found an absolutely wonderful discussion posted by Northwest Equine Veterinary Associates today about EHV-1, the disease we’re all terrified of. I don’t THINK you have to be a Facebook member to read this, but if you do, I’ll copy it here later. Read that – it’ll tell you what to look for, what to do in terms of prevention and even how you can boost your horse’s immunity.
Men Arrested for Abandoning Horse …KUDOS to Riverside Animal Control – you guys ROCK! I’m trying to get personally involved in this one so I’ll let you know if that pans out. I’d really like to rehab him. Poor Thoroughbred, he never deserved any of this…he needs to be spoiled and fat and making him spoiled and fat would make me feel a lot better after my loss of my best horse last week. So cross your fingers it works out!
Can’t adopt? Why not sponsor a rescue horse…you can do so for just $25 a week (you know you spend that on coffee and/or fast food!) at Shiloh Horse Rescue. Jill has so many old cutie pies. My long time readers may remember when I outed Dreamchasers Horse Rescue on their horrible conditions and backyard breeding, and Jill stepped in to rescue numerous horses, despite having to suffer a truly vicious smear campaign against her by the Dreamchasers woman. This is one of those mares, Lovely, who is not adoptable due to having Wobblers, but is greatly enjoying her life at Shiloh and would love a sponsor!
Let’s talk lead changes!
This is a topic I thought about because I was working on it yesterday with several different horses. A flying lead change is a must for many different horse disciplines: hunter/jumper, barrel racing and other games, team penning, polo, etc. Your horse needs to be able to quickly switch over to the other canter lead when required, without breaking to a trot. Yet, this is something that you see a lot of horses and riders having trouble with. It’s common to see horses “hang” a lead – change in the front end and not in the back, getting the back end in some scrambly manner or by breaking to a trot some strides later – or not change at all and just careen around awkwardly on the wrong lead.
Here’s a good video I’ve found that allows you to see not only a clean lead change but also one where the horse hung the lead, close up.
Getting lead changes right is not helped by riders who aren’t always sure what lead their horse is on. I know that most of us (myself included) learned leads by watching the shoulders to see which was going further forward, but that’s grade school. You all need to move past that and learn to feel which lead your horse is on, without looking. (Looking equals leaning and leaning works directly against your horse’s ability to change leads). Learning to feel the lead will also help you feel the timing of the stride, and asking for a lead change at the correct time is imperative in teaching your horse to have that nice, clean lead change. It’s not that hard to learn to feel leads. You could look up at the sky and still know which leg was going forward at the walk, right? Well, start moving that up in speed. Have a friend watch you as you pick up the lope/canter on a straight line. Don’t look down and try to tell her what lead your horse picked up. Once you take away from yourself the crutch of looking down, you really will start to develop a feel for what your horse’s legs are doing that doesn’t rely upon your eyes.
Now, once you know your leads and how to feel them, how do you fix what your horse is doing? It’s all about collection. It’s easy to think that collection equals slow speed, but it doesn’t. Your horse can be collected at the gallop. A horse that isn’t collected — who is “strung out” — is hauling himself around, at whatever speed, with his front legs. The back end is just dragging around behind him, and because of that, it’s almost impossible to get the front and back end to work as a team when you want a lead change. This is when you get the change in the front but not in the back. The front change is easy – especially for the old packer school horses that many of you are riding. Changing on both ends at the same time requires more work, and if you don’t ask correctly, you won’t get it. Asking correctly means collecting the horse up and then asking for the change at the right moment in the horse’s stride. Timing is virtually everything. If you’re on the right lead and you want the left lead, you need to ask AS the left foreleg is starting to come forward. I’ve seen various discussions on how to ask. I personally put my weight over to the seat bone of the lead I want and cue with the opposite leg, and I always look in the direction of where I want to change to/go to because looking is a great body language cue to your horse about what’s next. When I rode hunters, I was taught to pick up the rein on the side of the lead that I wanted, but you don’t have that option when you are riding with one hand and, as with everything, the best riding is accomplished from the seat and leg, not the hands.
When you do get a change in front but not in back, what’s the best way to fix it? Again, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about this. You have to collect the horse up to fix it, one way or the other. You can break to a trot or almost to a trot for a stride and pick up the lead again, or you can collect the horse up at the canter and ask him to catch his back end up with his front. I think the second method is better as the horse doesn’t think he’s ever going to get to do a simple change, but if your trainer thinks that the little trot step makes for a prettier fix in the show ring, I’m not going to argue with her. When I was showing, you Did.Not.Break.Ever – even the slightest stride of trot meant you were out of the ribbons – but since that time I’ve seen a lot of kids who break to get the change placing over the valiant kid who keeps on trucking and tries to fix the lead without breaking gait. However, from a horse training perspective, IMO if you want the horse to really learn the change, it’s better to collect him up at the canter and ask him to fix it without breaking gait.
One thing that I’ve had work with a horse that doesn’t want to do a flying change is doing it outside in a big field. Take the arena walls away and let him motor on a little bit and do figure 8′s, serpentines, whatever, at the canter. I’ve had it work great, and once they get the feel of doing a flying change with weight on their back (if you’ve noticed, they can ALL do it just FINE in the pasture!) it tends to carry over.
I’d love to discuss some of the other problems with lead changes today. One that I see a lot is horses becoming anxious about changes to the point where every time you canter a circle through the middle of the arena, they are hopping and bopping and anticipating. Right now I have a horse to ride that changes, but throws in a serious prop on her front legs, stiff legged and unpleasant, with the change. She is a conformational train wreck of the type that I’ve noted before can often be found in polo (I really must take a picture…long as a train, god-awful upside down neck) and she canters in general like Pepe le Peu, so none of this is helping her out. I’m sort of fascinated by the challenge of wondering if I could get this critter to be more soft and flexible despite how she’s put together, but it might be an example of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear! That said, I’m pretty sure there is a way to keep the forward motion up and remove the prop…assuming my bad lower back survives the process, LOL.
So let’s talk about it. Does your horse(s) do a flying change? Have you managed to teach it to a resistant horse or overcome problems with it? What advice can you offer? What problems are you having? And yes, I fully expect to read about how I have given terrible advice because the entire process/philosophy of teaching the change differs so much from discipline to discipline. While it’s the same movement in dressage, you guys ask for it differently than someone does for, say, barrel racing or polo. And those disciplines are doing it differently than the Western Riding people are doing it. So let’s try not to have a huge War of the Methods here — the point is that this tends to be a training challenge for a lot of horses/riders in a lot of different disciplines and the goal of today’s post is to try to help find some solutions! In that vein, if you choose to post video to show what your horse is doing, (Youtube will embed on the blog), I will NOT let any comments get through that are nasty or not constructive. So please keep your comments in line with what you’d say to someone in person if you were teaching a lesson. Thanks!
Another update: The Tale of the Crazy Friesian Lady!
I just heard someone who saw Broadway here on the blog adopted her! Woohoo! I want updates…I love that little mare! Today’s Shiloh Horse Rescue adoptable horse is Cricket, a cutie-pie of a Morab. She was just a mom when Shiloh got her, and is green under saddle but she’s sweet and has a lot of potential. Check her out if you’re near Nevada!
Justice Updates!
Some news I wanted to share about a couple of previous blog stories…
They finally convicted and sentenced Trina Kenney. Wow. What a long road that has been. (My blog on her here). The people I really have to applaud here are those who were defrauded, who refused to let this go. They ran all over the Internet and made sure as many people as possible knew about Trina and what she was doing. This story is sure to make every sleazy horse dealer in America stand up and take notice. It really isn’t legal to lie about and misrepresent horses! I know you have all been getting away from it forever, but people are getting smarter and less willing to be victimized, so if you don’t want 41 months in jail and a fine of over $270K, you might think about inserting a little more honesty into your dealings.
Robin Vess (original blog story here) is back in court arguing that her trial wasn’t faaaaaaair. Her lawyer says her previous lawyer sucked (they all say that) and that a witness against her had a “vendetta” against her. So what? Unless you are alleging that the witness lied on the stand, who cares if she hated Robin? I hate everybody like Robin, who lets horses starve. I think that’s normal.
Speaking of people who let horses starve, James Leachman (original blog here was trying to get a public defender to represent him. What a joke! This comes right after he bought back about 70 of his horses at the auction after they were seized, at a cost of over $35,000! Fortunately, the court told him to STFU and pay his legal fees like everyone else. What a loser.
And just in a bit of other news, check out this stupid bitch in Wisconsin who has now spent EIGHT YEARS trying to sue for “civil rights violations” after police had to seize her emaciated 32 year old mare. Eight years! Kelly Mahnke, guess what? You were wrong. You were wrong eight years ago and you are still wrong. Now you have spent God only knows what in legal fees, and you are still wrong. Oh well, at least you have helped the economy by keeping your lawyer and his staff busy…I hope your current horses aren’t starving to death in the meantime while you pay your legal bills, though!
Apparently all the horses in the Kempf case (original blog here) have been transferred to Donna Ewing of HARPS. News story. While I am NOT a Donna fan given her pro-slaughter stance, nor do I think that getting horses to lead in a week is a sign that you are a “horse whisperer” (really? You REALLY used that term?), I know that many of you (me too) were concerned about whether the original rescue had the resources/knowledge to deal with these horses, so this is probably a good thing for them. I do believe they’re much safer now in terms of getting feeding, vet care, hoof care, etc. – I just wish Donna would stop buying into that pro-slaughter bullshit that the problem is that we closed the U.S. slaughterhouses. Does this woman ever go to auctions? You can still dump a horse, the same as you always could. Happens every day. If you have an update on someone previously featured here, please share — everybody loves to hear that our court system is working!
Congratulations! You’re EVERYTHING that’s wrong with BYB’s!
Original blog here about James Leachman, in case you missed it.
Leachman turned out to have EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE HORSES
Those of you familiar with my blog know that I don’t use the term BYB in any way that has a particular relationship to backyards or lack of facilities. You are a BYB in my book if you do ANY of the following:
- breed stuff you can’t afford to feed, vet and trim regularly
- breed stuff you don’t handle and train appropriately to its age
- breed registerable foals but then fail to register them
- breed without researching to ensure that there is a strong market for the resulting foals (and I don’t mean the kill pen)
- Keep crippled mares endlessly pregnant as baby machines. I don’t mean mares that are a little off at the trot. I mean mares with huge knees that can hardly walk to the water trough.
- breed with no attention paid to avoiding genetic diseases
- keep horses in an inappropriate facility, including ANY barbed wire, extra credit for foals out on barbed wire
- breed anything, even nice horses, in such an excess number that you drive down the entire market for them.
Leachman fails on every single count here. Eight hundred and twenty nine! And of course, wild as hell since they’re either unhandled or haven’t been handled in years. Even nice broodmares, running with a herd, quickly become convinced they are wild mustangs from the prairie. Anyone who has ever worked on a breeding farm and had to go get ONE MARE out of the herd to see the vet knows this. 
Never a good time. But at least on a proper farm, mares are pulled away periodically, for vet care, for hoof trims, for deworming. These mares probably have not been touched in years, so that even if they had some training on them at one time, it is going to be a challenge to get them back to usefulness.
Then you have to look at the hoof neglect. You know, hooves are not hedges. You can’t just let them overgrow for years and years and then take a clippers to them and all is well. Neglect leads to problems that aren’t always fixable. A lot of these mares are coming out crippled, and it didn’t help that Leachman left leg bands on them that cut into the skin, as described in the article.
And, really, I don’t know why I’m discussing this at all since the vast majority of them are going to be on a dinner table within weeks. They’re all going up for sale. Who do YOU think is buying?
Leachman horse sale expected to start Saturday
Let’s remember from the original story that the reason Leachman didn’t sell them off earlier was that he didn’t feel they would go for enough money and, you know, these are his Rare Speshul Unregistered Quarter Horses we’re talking about here. Well, dickhead, now they’re mostly going to be Rare Speshul Unregistered Quarter Horse Steak. Hope you’re proud of yourself, you piece of lazy, selfish, irresponsible shit. One man’s ego is now going to lead to the slaughter of the majority of 800 plus horses that did not even need to exist in the first place if no one was going to do anything with them. Not to mention that it has cost the poor people of Billings six figures and counting to deal with cleaning up this moron’s mess. I’m surprised he doesn’t get tomatoes thrown at him in Wal-Mart.
Again (and I know I’m preaching to the choir), it’s not like growing carrots! You can’t just MAKE them, you have to TRAIN them and put WORK into them to make them worth anything! And especially so when they are nothing special to begin with. Argue with me all you want about which AQHA lines are the better ones, these AREN’T the hot bloodlines that sell for good money. These are long-backed, common headed foundation breds. Do some people like them? Sure. But they don’t have the same value to the average buyer, standing there in a field, as they would if they had pedigrees full of close-up ties to top cutting horses, reining horses, or western pleasure horses.
Those of you who think they’re awesome horses, hey, get on out there and bid – I’d love to hear that some of them did not go straight to kill, but I am not holding my breath. Leachman should be drawn and quartered for this spectacle of senseless suffering. A lightning bolt should just come down and hit him. What a pig.
Today’s adoptable horse from Shiloh Horse Rescue is Intrepid, JC name Aeronautics. This poor guy was dumped at the feedlot straight from the track fully bodyclipped in November 2009 so he was shaking like a leaf when Jill got him. He had a suspensory injury and an old fracture, so he has had time off to heal and now is slowly being re-started under saddle and all looks good. He’s only six so he has a lot of great years ahead of him in an easier profession than racing!
It’s not like I didn’t warn you…
As none of us are surprised to hear, Seize the Day turned into Seize the Horses. The Sheriff has finally gotten off his posterior and taken that psycho Byrde Lynn Hill’s horses away. Well, the ones that are still alive, anyway. And they can’t physically take them away, because now they are having a blizzard down there. Hey, Sheriff? I told the world about this on December 7th…start paying attention to my blog and you won’t have to haul hay in a blizzard two-and-a-half months later. And you might have actually saved some of those lives.
Original Blog about Carpe Diem Farms
As I noted before, one of the most shocking elements here is that the woman who created this trainwreck has her doctorate. She’s not dumb. She might be nuts. But I’m guessing she’s not even clinically insane. She’s just another asshat who created a mess and walked away from it. Out of sight, out of mind. Can’t see those dying horses from your home in Seattle, can you Byrde? Don’t have to watch them and have your little emotions hurt by seeing their suffering (or more likely, by having to think about the loss of “your dream,” because we all know this is ALL about you and ZERO about the horses, don’t we?). Can just pretend everything is fine down there at the farm, right?
I’d love to interview her. I am sure she has, as my mom used to say, more excuses than Hector’s got pups for this situation. Might make for a good Youtube video, anyway! I certainly hope Wallowa County gets angry enough about the cost and the work this dumb bitch has created to prosecute the hell out of her. I know better than to hope they will get angry enough about the unnecessarily dead, beautiful Lusitanos.
When I hear something about the case, or when horses will be available to adopt, I’ll let you know. I can see some really nice rescue success stories coming out of this disaster, and if you ever wanted a $25,000 Lusitano, I’m guessing you’ll be able to get your hands on one for $500 sooner than later. And given how upset IALHA was with her anyway, I’m guessing you’ll get your papers. At least that’s going to be a win for the good homes wanting one of these horses!
